Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Russian Officials Use Anti-Extremism Laws Against Protestants Rather than Islamists

Paul
Goble

Staunton, June 7 – Vladimir Putin has
cultivated an image as the defender of Christianity and defends his
anti-extremist legislation as a serious effort to combat Islamist terrorism,
but in fact, the Kremlin leader is not interested in defending Protestant
Christianity and is using the anti-extremist laws primarily against followers
of that third largest religious group in Russia.

There are some three million
Protestants in Russia today in more than 4,000 parishes. (Only the Russian
Orthodox Church and the Muslims have more.) But instead of being protected,
Anna Alekseyeva says, more than 100 Protestants have been convicted of
extremism, vastly more than the number of Muslims who have suffered that fate (snob.ru/selected/entry/125448).

Indeed, it is clear, she says, that
the Yarovaya package of laws is being directed “against Martin Luther” more
than against Islamists.She recalls that
in 1517, Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of a Wittenburg church.Irina Yarovaya has “only two theses”:
missionary activity must not take place in residences and missionaries must be
registered with the state.

She cites the words of Aleksey
Teleus, an Evangelical Baptist pastor in Noyabrsk, who says that the Yarovaya
law is supposed to be about fighting terrorists but adds that he is unaware of “a
single case when it has been applied against terrorists.”Instead, it is being deployed first and
foremost against Protestant Christians.

Dmitry Shatrov, senior pastor of the
Pentecostal Good News Mission, agrees. “The law is being applied precisely
against Protestants” by officials who read it in extremely expansive ways.But according to him, this latest repressive
action isn’t discouraging Protestants but rather making them “more attentive
and disciplined.”

“In any case,” he says, “no one will
be able to stop that which is directed by Jesus Christ Himself. We tell people
about faith in God and we will continue to do so. My grandparents were jailed
for doing that.” And the current round of repression isn’t going to stop him
from following in their footsteps as God requires.

Russian Protestants have never had
an easy time of it, Alekseyeva points out. “At the end of the 19th
century, Russian Baptists were deported en masse to the Trans-Caucasus and the
Far East … During World War I, [their] position got a lot worse because their
faith was considered German.” And in the 1930s, they were exiled, forced into
emigration or imprisoned.

Given this history, many Russian
Protestants view the current round of official repression as not all that
serious. But nonetheless, what the Russian authorities are doing is at the very
least a violation of the Russian Constitution and basic human rights and
deserving of the broadest possible criticism.

Andrey Matyuzhov, a Kemerovo pastor
who has been fined 40,000 rubles for missionary activity, says that the
authorities today are going extremely far to repress the faithful. He and his
wife help those with drug problems, including prostitutes, but when he sought
to testify in court, the judge cut him off saying that “You are a pastor: any
word from you is preaching!”

Russian officials want to frighten
Protestants, he says, but they are not succeeding. If Stalin and Khrushchev
couldn’t stamp out Protestants, neither can Putin. Once again, Matyuzhov says,
Protestants will “simply go underground,” continue their religious activities,
and carry out the will of the Lord – although fewer foreign missionaries will
be able to come.

Sergey Ryakhovsky, president of the
Russian United Union of Evangelical Christians, says that he has the sense that
Russian officials confuse protesters with Protestants.“We are not protesting: we are Protestants by
faith … the ignorance of regional law enforcement personnel and bureaucrats is beyond
belief.”